"I am an important asset to the Wardens," I said, possibly too earnestly and too literally. "Should I not admit I am valuable? Is that wrong?"
"No, it's not wrong, Cass," he said, and put the beer down. He walked to me and put his hands on my upper arms. His right was cold, his left warm, but the temperature quickly equalized; I forgot the sensation as I looked into his eyes and saw the regard and strength there. "You maybe stretch the reasonable limits of self-confidence sometimes, but it's not wrong. You are valuable." His hands glided up my arms, and his voice softened and deepened. "God knows, I can't put a price on what I feel for you. You know that, right? You feel that?"
I put my hands flat on his chest, but not to push him away; I savored the feeling of his lungs moving, his heart pumping. Life, in all its odd, complex glory.
Luis, too, was irreplaceable. As was Isabel. As had been Manny and Angela.
And in that moment, I knew the decision had already been made for me--that I couldn't possibly allow Luis and Isabel to fight without me, whether the cause was good or bad. And yet I knew that fighting might bring terrible consequences.
There might come a time when we would all have to surrender.
Luis might have known it, too, but he wisely didn't pursue the subject. He kissed me instead, a sweet, warm lingering of lips and tongues, and I felt tension gathering inside, golden-hot, when I heard Isabel say, "Tia Cassie?"
Unthinkable as it might have been, I'd forgotten her completely. I broke free of Luis's embrace and turned, to find that she'd emptied the bathwater, wrapped herself in a towel, and was standing there on the tile floor, dripping. Her eyes were huge, and full of curiosity.
"Are you in love with my uncle Luis?" she asked.
I looked at Luis, who stared back, on the verge of laughing. He spread his hands helplessly. "Hey, she didn't ask me," he said. "Good luck."
In this, at least, I was determined to be truthful. I sank down to one knee in front of Isabel, which put us almost on eye level, and said, "Yes. I love your uncle very much. Is that all right?"
She cocked her head a little to one side, thinking; clearly, she hadn't expected such a direct response. From the choked sound Luis was making, neither had he. "I suppose," she said, a little severely. "But don't make him sad. I won't like it if you make him sad."
She continued to watch me with a serious expression, until I nodded with equal gravity. What Luis might not have picked up from her words was the underlying threat. She still doubted me, at some very deep level; my once-Djinn-sister Pearl had gone to great lengths to try to create me as the villain in Ibby's life, to paint me as a monster and a cruel murderer, to twist the child in the direction that Pearl wished her to go, for whatever obscure and dangerous reason. It would take time for Ibby to get over that completely, even if on a rational level she was trying to believe in me again.
I didn't yet know what Pearl was trying to achieve by abducting and altering these children, but I knew one thing: They were powerful, and dangerous when angered.
The subtext of what Ibby had said was quite clear: If you hurt him, I'll hurt you back. And she meant every unsaid word of it. She might not want to hurt bad people, but she would, for Luis, make a definite exception to her rule ... even if the bad person was me.
I nodded, holding her gaze. There was no doubt between us what she meant, or what I had agreed. Ibby, satisfied, grabbed her pale pink nightgown, the one with bright cartoon characters woven in the fabric, and shut the door to change.
Luis had watched the entire exchange, and now, as I glanced toward him, I saw that he hadn't missed any of the subtexts, either. "Dios," he breathed. "She really would take you on if she had to, wouldn't she?"
I nodded. "For you, she'd take on anyone. You're all she has, Luis."
"No," he said. "She has you, too. Even if she doesn't really know that yet."
I wanted to believe that, but I had choices to make--small ones now, and larger ones looming like storms in the distance. The wrong decision at any time would have catastrophic consequences, not just for me but for everyone I had come to love in the human world. I had, in a very real sense, been sent here by the Djinn to halt a disastrous, still-unknowable chain of events that Pearl had put in motion, by breaking a weak link in the chain itself.
The link of human life, from which Pearl was drawing her power.
Perhaps even the right decision this time would still mean that I would become the villain Ibby so feared, destroy my fragile relationship with her uncle, and set me adrift and alone.
Choices.
I hated them.
I felt a burst of power from the bathroom, and reacted without thinking to what could have been an attack upon Isabel; I banged the door open and charged in, and caused Ibby to yelp and back up fast against the wall. She was wearing the nightgown, and her hair was dry and crackling with energy. Too much energy. There wasn't a trace of water drops in the tub or on the floor, but there was a faint smell of singed fabric in the air.
I stopped, but not before Ibby had formed a ball of white-hot fire in the palm of her hand. She was staring at me with huge, terrified eyes, and I knew she was seeing something that Pearl had shown her--me, killing her uncle. It was a lie, but it was so hard for her to forget the images, and I had just triggered a flashback with my overreaction and violence.
I held up both hands to her, palms out. "Peace, Isabel," I said, in my most soothing voice. "I am sorry I frightened you. I was only worried for you. I thought something bad had happened."
She didn't quench the flame immediately; she kept watching me, wary and unhappy, until Luis appeared behind me in the doorway. "Ibby," he said. "Stop."
She closed her fist, and the flames died, leaving a brilliant aura I could still see when I blinked. "I didn't do anything," she blurted, and her pouting lips quivered, as if she might burst into wails at any moment. "She scared me! I didn't do anything wrong!"
"You used power," I said. "You promised you wouldn't, except in self-defense and with our guidance."
Now the pout was more pronounced, and her small features took on a stubborn, set look. "I was wet. I just wanted to get dry."
"Ibby, you can't do that," Luis said, and eased around me to put himself between the two of us. "You promised me, sweetheart. You promised you wouldn't use power just because it was easy."
"But I was wet. You dry yourself off. I've seen it."
"That's true, but we're older. There are a lot of things you can do when you're older that you shouldn't be doing now."
"Like what?"
"Like drinking beer. Or kissing. Or using power just because it's there. It's dangerous, Ibby. It can hurt you, and maybe hurt other people, too." For a man who had never expected to have these sorts of conversations with a child, he was doing well, I thought.
Ibby, however, still had her doubts. "But you wanted me to save those people in the fire. You said I should."
"And you were very brave," I said, when I saw the indecision on Luis's face. "But that was when we were with you, to help and make sure you didn't get hurt. You shouldn't do things on your own."
"You think I'm bad," Ibby said, and her face became a hostile mask. "Like the Lady said. The Wardens think we're all bad. They want to punish us and take away what makes us special. And now you want to do it, too, to me. You want to take it all away."
"No," Luis said. "We want to make you safe. That's all. You have to trust me, Ibby. You do, don't you?"
He sounded so sincere, so warm, that I couldn't imagine how anyone could have distrusted him even for an instant. Ibby wavered, and finally nodded. "I trust you." She still wasn't forgiving me, I noticed. "You're not going to make me go to that school place, are you?"
"No, I'm not going to make you go," he said. "We're not going to let them take you away, either. So don't be afraid, okay?"
"Okay." She fidgeted for a moment, then walked to Luis and hugged him. "Can I go watch a movie now?"
"One, and then bed," he said. "How about tha
t movie with the fish? You like that one."
She brightened immediately, and nodded. She even turned a sweetly dimpled smile on me, and I smiled in turn, feeling a little of my unease abate. She moved away down the hall, excited by the prospect of fun, her fright forgotten.
But she'd not forgotten the rest of it. I knew that. She didn't trust me.
And the truth was she was right not to.
Chapter 3
EMOTIONS ASIDE, there was really no question of whether Ibby would go to the Wardens' retreat, or hospital, or school--whatever they wished to call it. At her tender age, with the kind of trauma and training (if one could call it that) that had been visited upon her, I did not believe that she could be counted on to learn right from wrong when it came to her powers, even with our guidance. In the worst case, Luis and I would be hard-pressed to contain her without damage, should it come to that, and keeping her in a situation in which others would be put at risk was a very bad idea. Isabel's gift was explosive ... literally. She had a second gift of Earth powers that would be much slower to develop, but I'd seen that element misused just as badly as fire, in the wrong hands. But fire--fire was disastrously easy for her, and it was one of the most visible, terrifying gifts. Humans--and I now counted myself among them--had a distinctively sharp fear of burning. I knew she would eventually learn to use that to get her way. What child her age wouldn't, in the end?
So no matter what Luis had said, or what he (or I) had promised, Isabel would have to be taken to a place of safety and seclusion until her powers could be curbed and properly directed. Betraying her like that would damage the fragile trust she had in me, particularly, but I couldn't help it.
Even Djinn understood that standing responsible for children meant not always being liked. Luis couldn't make that decision.
I could.
After Isabel was asleep, I poured Luis a glass of water (he had not been drinking enough) and, when he reached for another beer, closed the refrigerator door not quite on his hand.
"She has to go," I said. "You know she has to go, no matter what she thinks. No matter how hard it will be. You'd never forgive yourself if she injured herself, or others, because we tried to protect her too much."
He took the water glass, turned it in his fingers, and stared into it without acknowledging what I'd said. Finally, he drank it in one long, choking gulp and handed the empty back. I refilled it for him.
"I promised her," he said. "You think I'm going to break my word?"
"No. I am going to break my word. You'll bear no guilt."
Luis looked up, frowning. "It's not about my conscience, Cass."
"I think it is, and I understand why. But you know that Marion's arguments are sound. Ibby needs more help than we can give her alone, and better training and protection. If she's around children with similar experiences, it could be helpful to her."
"She doesn't want to go!"
"She's six years old. Of course she doesn't want to go. But one of us must make the choice to do what's necessary."
"And that's you," Luis said. "Always you." He handed the water back again, and walked away, head down. "All right. You're right--I know you are. What now?"
"We'll have to be careful in how we go about it," I said. "You know that she will fight us, and it can turn very dangerous. This house could easily be destroyed."
"Hell, we could destroy the whole neighborhood if this goes bad," he said, and sighed. "I've been thinking about it, too. I talked to Marion. She's not bending--we bring Ibby within the week, or she sends an extraction team, and things get real damn messy. But even if we agree to take Ibby ourselves, things could still get messy."
In solidarity with him, and in compensation for his lost beer, I drank the rest of the water. I had several sips before I said, "Can't you catch her sleeping, and deepen her rest to a coma so she doesn't wake?" It was an Earth Warden skill, but it was tricky, and required constant monitoring to ensure that a false coma didn't become a true one.
"I could," he said, and frowned unhappily. "No, I should be able to, but honestly, I think she's on guard against stuff like that now. Pearl's training was thorough. I'm afraid she'll wake up, either as I'm doing it or when we're traveling, and all hell will break loose. I can't keep somebody down who's fighting it without serious risk. She doesn't really trust you, and we can't afford to make her feel the same way about me. If she starts distrusting me, I don't see how we can be sure she won't be able to block us." He drank some of his water, not very eagerly. "You think you can get to her quickly enough to take her down without problems?"
I was even less likely to succeed, and I shook my head. "Yet it must be done."
"Yeah, I know." Luis was deeply troubled, not only by the risks of keeping her here, or moving her elsewhere, but by the emotional cost to the girl. "Cass, I can't help thinking that maybe this is what Pearl wanted. To have us rescue Ibby and bring her out here, into the human world, where she can do maximum damage. She could use Ibby to keep all of us pinned down and working twice as hard as we should. She could set these kids off like time bombs."
I had a difficult time deciding what Pearl's motivations might have been, at any point; she had always been hard to anticipate even when I had not been her enemy, though that was aeons ago, in a very different world. She could be cruel for cruelty's sake, or cruel to a purpose, and it was impossible for me to know which her abduction of Isabel had been. But she had a plan; I knew that.
And it ended with the destruction of the Djinn, which was an insane goal; it meant ultimately the death of the world itself. Pearl hated everything, and hated it enough to be willing to sweep it all away in her blind rage. Humans, Djinn, animals, plants, the rich life force of the planet itself. She might expire with the rest of it, but she would survive long enough to look on a barren, dying ball of rock, and the death of all that lived. Dying last was her definition of winning.
There was a simple enough way to stop her, if I had the courage to choose it; it would mean the destruction of Isabel, of Luis, of all humans with whom I shared this strange, fragile life--a kind of firebreak, cutting Pearl off from the source of her power. But one species sacrificed for the sake of the planet ... one species out of so, so many. It had been done before.
In dooming me to mortal flesh for refusing his orders, though, Ashan had inadvertently convinced me that killing humanity was the last thing I wanted to do. I was determined to find another way, any way, to defeat my former sister.
But I still didn't see what that way could be.
"Cass?" Luis's hand closed over mine, drawing me back from the cold reaches of speculation to a warm, surprisingly sweet present. I felt an instant spark to him, an opening of my attention that surprised me, and I felt myself smile. "We're going to figure it out. Don't go there."
I raised my eyebrows. "Where?"
"To that closed-in, dark place where you always go. Sooner or later, if you go there, you won't come back to me, and I can't stand that. I really can't."
I knew what he meant, and laid my other hand over his in a silent promise.
I would always come back.
For him.
The solution presented itself to me in an odd way. Ibby herself suggested it the next day, when she grew bored with the things that used to interest her, before her abduction. First she wanted movies, then books, then stories told to her. Toys failed to entice. By noon, she had driven Luis mad with her demands, and I had watched, bemused, as he ran out of ways to try to deal with her patiently.
"That's enough," he said, when she shoved the latest game--some sort of puzzle--off the table onto the kitchen floor in a petulant tantrum. "Enough, Isabel. Stop acting like you're two."
"Stop pretending like you care," she shot back. She folded her chubby arms, tucked her chin down, and glared at him, and at me, as I watched from a safe distance. "It's boring. This is all boring. You're treating me like a little kid."
"Then what would you like to do?" I asked her.
"Go som
ewhere."
"Where?"
She sighed dramatically. "Anywhere!"
I exchanged a glance with Luis, but only a brief one. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, but I didn't really need to know. The glance was only to warn him not to interfere. "Would you like to ride on the back of my motorcycle?"
He frowned at me, and silently mouthed, What are you doing? I shook my head slightly in response, and he subsided.
Ibby, regardless of her trust (or lack of it) for me, brightened immediately at the prospect of doing something implicitly dangerous. "Yes!" She wriggled down from her chair and dashed away.
"What the hell, Cass?" Luis asked, as soon as she was out of earshot. "You're not going to take her--"
"No," I said, knowing what he was asking. "Not directly. I'm taking her to see an object lesson."
"Where?"
"You won't like it," I said. "It's best I don't tell you about it. Not yet."
"You want me to come with?"
"No," I said, as gently as I could. "This needs to be just the two of us. I'm sorry."
That was asking for a great deal of trust, and I saw it warring inside of him, but he finally bent his head stiffly and said, "Okay." He wanted to say more, but at last he let it go. "Girl talk. I get it."
Ibby came back. I couldn't see that she'd done anything at all to prepare for the trip. "You have to change clothes," I told her. She was wearing a pale pink flowered dress, one more suited to a party than a motorcycle ride.
"Why?"
"Because you'll be on a motorcycle. A dress is not suitable for a motorcycle."
"Why?" Ibby's dark eyes were wide, and the set of her mouth was dangerously stubborn.
"Because your dress can blow up."
"So?"
"It's not appropriate to--" I struggled for an explanation, and glared at Luis as he started to laugh. "Just put on pants, Ibby." Impossible as it seemed, I found myself being concerned about the child's appropriate attire.
How the Djinn would have laughed.
Isabel stomped off to change clothes, frowning, and Luis chuckled and leaned over to kiss me lightly on the forehead. "Very good," he said. "Outstanding. You're getting the hang of this parent thing." I felt myself frowning, which made him laugh and kiss me again, this time on the mouth. That felt warm and wet and delicious, and I wished that I hadn't committed myself quite so quickly to taking Isabel out. Surely we could find something to occupy such a young child for an hour ... or possibly two.